In the fields of precision management of crop irrigation, city planning, military operations, etc., aerial ground mapping is an important aspect to these and other applications. Laser Imaging Detecting and Ranging (LIDAR) systems are presently used to determine absolute elevation of the ground for generating digital elevation maps. LIDAR systems are very expensive and require costly processing in order to generate a detailed elevation map. Another approach is to use a digital elevation mapping technique that uses stereoscopic techniques in order to generate an elevation map. Stereoscopic techniques require extensive manual calculations or very expensive advanced digital processing equipment for processing a very large amount of data.
Therefore, there exists a need for a less expensive, fast, and accurate system and method for generating elevation maps.